NAPLES - To boost productivity, businesses often provide employees with cell phones and other wireless devices, but that can increase an employer's liability if a crash occurs while an employee is on a cell phone or another device — even a GPS. Knowing an employer's automobile liability insurance is worth more than an employee's personal policy, savvy attorneys are going after the deeper pockets.

Sydni Rounds, an aspiring medical student, was driving to Physicians Regional Medical Center to volunteer early one afternoon when a pickup truck drove over a grassy median on Golden Gate Boulevard and crashed head-on into her car.

The 18-year-old girl died hours later.

Anthony Dirre of Golden Gate Estates told Cpl. Melanie Thompson of the Florida Highway Patrol that he was talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone, dropped it and bent down to get it.

"I grabbed it and I jerked the wheel ... and it was like it all happened so fast," Dirre said during a taped interview that day, June 28, 2008. "It was too late, because by the time I grabbed the wheel ... boom."

Dirre told the trooper he was driving his boss' truck.

Rounds' mother, Alicia "Dani" Rounds, later sued Dirre's employer, Network Support Solution of SW Florida Inc., which denies the truck emblazoned with business logos was a company truck.

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James Caskey Jr., 62, of North Naples, was pedaling his unusual, eye-catching three-wheel, recumbent racing bike on his daily morning ride around his neighborhood on Aug. 12, 2008, when he was killed by a car on Island Walk Circle.

Finding the broad daylight crash unusual, widow Margaret Caskey's attorney, James Fox of Naples, subpoenaed telephone records and found Lawrence A. Daniels, 42, a traveling pharmaceutical salesman, was texting when he left his Island Walk home and headed to work in a company car.

This March, Caskey sued Daniels and Astellas Pharma US Inc. for her husband's wrongful death, alleging Daniels was working and engaged in intentional misconduct, gross negligence, or both, by texting when the crash occurred.

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To boost productivity, businesses often provide employees with cell phones and other wireless devices, but that can increase an employer's liability if a crash occurs while an employee is on a cell phone or another device — even a GPS.

Knowing an employer's automobile liability insurance is worth more than an employee's personal policy, savvy attorneys are going after the deeper pockets.

In April, the parents of two teenage sisters killed by an Illinois State Trooper sued the state and trooper, seeking $46 million. The trooper was headed to a crash in November 2007, using a cell phone, e-mailing on his computer and driving 126 mph on a highway.

In 2007, International Paper Co. settled a lawsuit for $5.2 million after an Atlanta woman was forced off the road and lost an arm. The employee who rear-ended her car was driving a company car, using a company cell phone, and adhering to the company's hands-free device policy. But the company didn't want to leave its fate to a jury.

In 2001, a Miami jury found Dyke Industries, an Arkansas lumber company, liable for $21 million after a 78-year-old woman was disabled in a crash caused by a salesman making a business call. After an appeal, the lumber company's insurer settled for $16.1 million, on top of $100,000 from the driver's policy.

It often doesn't matter if an employee wasn't on the company clock.

The state of Hawaii in 2001 agreed to pay $1.5 million to a New Jersey tourist who suffered brain damage after a state teacher ran over him. She'd just completed a cell phone call while driving to work and hit him as he walked across a highway. The tourist received $550,000 in settlements from three insurers.

In 2004, while jurors were deliberating its liability, Georgia construction company Beers Skanska settled a seriously injured man's lawsuit for $4.75 million, on top of $250,000 from the employee's insurer.

The employee had reached toward a mounted, hands-free phone to retrieve voicemail messages and was responding to a work-related call when he rear-ended a stopped car. The chain reaction crash seriously injured a man in a car ahead.

And in 1999, Smith Barney paid a $500,000 settlement after a stockbroker tried to call a client and dropped his cell phone while driving to a restaurant on a Saturday night. He bent over, drove through a red light, killed a motorcyclist, sped away, hid his red Mercedes, and purchased a similar model.

Employees also can lose a lot. The trooper lost his job, pleaded guilty in April to aggravated reckless driving and reckless homicide and was sentenced to 2½ years of probation. The plea deal prohibits him from working as a police officer.

Jane Wagner, a 29-year-old Virginia attorney, was driving her Mercedes and racking up billable hours while talking to a client when she hit a 15-year-old pedestrian in March 2000.

Cooley Godward LLP fired her, the family sued, seeking $30 million, and the firm settled for an undisclosed amount in August 2004. The next month, a jury awarded the teen's parents and siblings more than $2 million from Wagner's own auto policy. She served a year in jail, leaving her newborn baby, lost her law license due to the felony conviction, and filed for bankruptcy.

Daniels, who killed the North Naples bicyclist, and Dirre, who killed the Naples teen, received just traffic tickets. Daniels was found guilty of failing to yield at a stop sign, fined $1,000, and lost his license for six months. When Dirre's traffic case came to court, the trooper was on vacation. With no witness to testify, a judge found Dirre not guilty of careless driving; the trooper was denied a rehearing.

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Studies show American motorists make about a billion minutes daily in calls — about 40 percent of all cell-phone use — and roughly 72 percent use cell phones while driving. A 2003 Harvard Center of Risk Analysis study estimated cell phone-related crashes cost $43 billion yearly in property damage, lost wages, medical bills and loss of life.

Florida lawyers often target an employer's insurance because bodily liability coverage isn't required here, so many drivers don't have it. Some employers, however, require it for employees.

"In every case, the first thing we have to do is determine whether we will be successful in making a financial recovery," said Naples attorney Bill Keith, who specializes in auto negligence. "If that person is indigent and has no assets, all you get is a judgment."

That was the case when a family came to Keith after a pedestrian walking on Airport-Pulling Road by the courthouse was killed by a driver believed to have been using a cell phone. The driver wasn't working, so the family couldn't sue.

Some still want a judgment, believing it's the only way to seek justice. Unlike a contingency basis, which means a lawyer is paid from a defendant's assets or insurance, those clients pay up front — and most can't afford that.

"Unfortunately, there are a lot of people injured in car accidents who have done nothing wrong and don't get a nickel," Keith said. "If there are no assets and no insurance, there's nothing to collect. That's sad but it's unfortunately the situation."

In Rounds' case, Naples attorney Christopher Mast, who declined comment, is arguing the company is "vicariously liable" under Florida's "dangerous instrumentality doctrine." Dirre's car broke down a year before and Mast contends the truck was loaned to him because he was an employee. He's arguing a legal theory based on personal property that's loaned for a purpose.

In a sworn statement, Robert Hubing, who owns the Naples-based computer technology firm, testified his wife, Suzanne, loaned Dirre her pickup truck, the crash occurred on a Saturday and that Dirre wasn't working.

This month, Mast heads to court to ask Collier Circuit Judge Cynthia Pivacek to compel the company to turn over credit card bills so he can prove the truck was maintained and used by the company.

Next month, Network Support Solution's attorney, Donna Tisch of Fort Myers, who declined comment, will ask the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing a company insignia isn't sufficient to prove a business' "domination and control."

Tisch's motion argues Mast failed to prove a "negligent entrustment claim" because he didn't show how Hubing should have known entrusting the truck to Dirre was "foolish or negligent."

Fox declined comment on his pending texting-while-driving lawsuit involving the North Naples bicyclist.

It's based on the most common legal doctrine involving employer liability, respondeat superior, which says a master, the employer, can be held responsible for harm done by its servant, an employee acting within the scope of employment.

If an employer failed to restrict use or train its employees on safe cell phone use, it also can be held liable for negligence. Experts say written policies, especially those signed by an employee, and monitoring compliance minimize the risk of costly lawsuits — and decrease accidents.